the tree counter

I have not planned on returning to update the blog this soon, within Twenty-four hours. If you have any hiccups with what I am going to say, please take it up with Satya Pamarti. I would be careful with Satya Pamarti if I were you, because he can pull your legs faster than you think.

Satya Pamarti asked about 'old intellectual'. A smart question, except that there was no 'old' intellectual until the 'new' intellectual was born, out of sheer necessity & craving created by other 'intellectuals'. So, we talk about normal, good old intellectual before the advent of this new intellectual (please see Aug 19th post). Since we defined the new intellectual in previous post, we can safely now refer to the previous form as the old. The reader understands that this has nothing to do with age or concept of time.

One did not have to be particularly bright in order to be counted as intellectual. One had to be diligent, focussed and not stray afar in order to have an in-depth scrutiny of the issue at hand. 'Focus' is a key word for the intellectual. What he did with the focus was to fine tune the issue and plunge into the depths in time and brought out relevant questions. The 'unusual brightness' aspect began only with the new intellectual who seem to have an obsession equally shared between western philosophy and vedas, all at the same time.

The 'old intellectual' (now that we defined 'new') counts trees. If you trusted a hundred people to count trees, I would not dispute the count the old intellectual comes away with, such was the resume of the old intellectual. He goes out all prepped with a map, a shovel, a fire, guards and any paraphernelia at his disposal to do the task. He completes the task with utmost confidence and diligence. In contrast, the new intellectual as referred to in the previous post would not even enter the forest. The old intellectual may have noticed the color, topography, height of the trees or even the continuity of the tree line or grouping but the question he prefers to answer would solely be about 'a number'. He does not stray into other areas unless prompted. When prompted for more information, he goes back over the tree line again with the same material he took before, and even improvising on his previous mission at times, and examines each of those for that question in order to provide an "informed" answer. Each of those aspects merited a discussion on its own for him. There was no need particularly to be scholarly about it. Old intellectual cared little about being scholarly. Such things mattered little to him. Questions related to the forest will come off of the knowledge base that was built in a consistent manner, in time. Who posed those questions also mattered little to the old intellectual. Cataloguing came naturally to the old intellectual. And did I say, he was focussed?
Charles Darwin published the origin of species. He examined the minutia. He would not answer about the evolution of a humanbeing. He leaves that question to others to be answered. Despite genius, he was a pragmatist. The old intellectual is a pragmatist. In a way he is also a schemer. Churchillian kind. He uses his knowledge for his own purpose that is limited by his perception. He made theories of balance of power based on his knowledge & he rarely would share that information with others except as and when it suited him. His theories would not see the light of day. Old intellectual does not seem to care much about theory yet in his grand scheme of things he is able to match any theory with the data he has.

The old intellectual could bring a few houses down if he chose to, based on the data he built over time. He lacked the courage to act with his data and specificity available at his fingertips. That also changes with timing. There is enough information out there, more often than not, readily at his disposal because he spent considerable amount of time on it. He chose not to act on it. It was purposeful. Everything the old intellectual did have a purpose. His purpose ended with the collection of information some times. He shared it occassionally when it suited the larger setting according to him. That occassional perspective did not sit well with the new intellectual who craved & pursued bigger questions, sometimes out of not having enough time and interest for the small stuff. The old intellectual chose to act only when his own existance came into question.

The recent outburst by the intellectuals in Vividha of Andhra Jyothy (August 22 issue of the literary section in a Telugu Daily Newspaper) confirms a few things about old intellectuals. None of the people wished to speak up when those revolutionary writers went off the track of writing and on to welcome death with a kiss. Yet each of them had everything at their disposal to write about their disagreements in an open manner. It is only when they perceived a threat in the form of a ban, they reacted, apparantly for their own sake more than any other reason. You can read volumes between the lines from Prof. Velcheru Narayan Rao: ఇవాళ విరసాన్ని నిషేధించడాన్ని మనం సహిస్తే, రేపు నిన్నూ నన్నూ నిషేధించడాన్ని సహించాల్సి వస్తుంది. (If we tolerate the ban on Virasam today, we will tolerate banning you and I). The fact is he failed to stop the hijack of reason by Virasam (at times with personal attacks) and he let Virasam speak for his idea of revolution all these years. Today he can not distance himself from Virasam.

Such a pathetic scene when relayed to the new intellectual, gave a sense of a higher ground, how ever true or false it might have been. As a result abstract attracted the new intellectual. He preferred to take flight and preferred to stay atleast a ten thousand feet or so above ground. He is able to tell how far the forest went or even where the water began. But he lost every sense possible with regard to the nitty gritty detail. The tragedy is that the new intellectual is completely aware that the detail exists. He just does not want to limit himself to the detail.

In America among Telugus, because there are so few of them that reflect on issues on a consistent basis, recognizing these cognoscenti becomes easier. The old intellectual comes to represent the cognoscenti, where as the new intellectual wishes to be known as Intelligentsia, indefinable and abstract term in itself. A name stands out & worthy of mention on my blog, with initials VCJ as an example of old intellectual. He epitomizes the intellectual that is talked about in this post. VCJ created RR, the new intellectual. The new intellectual is born from the mutation of the old as the old did not do enough with the knowledge he has. They both are two sides of the same coin. This is a paradigm that has been developing for a while with regard to the yin and yang of reasoning. There is the dueling of the personalities that shape reason & never again a single perspective is sufficient on any matter at hand. The reason will not be the same again.

To end it, I would say Satya Pamarti is wrong in assuming that one is worse than the other. Both do not serve the purpose on their own. Readers are to take everything with a grain of salt. It is the awareness about these great minds for the reader that would serve a purpose, as the reader must infer and interpret from both these minds, often doing the interpolation or extrapolation as needed.